Lynds Armstrong Piers

Gunner Lynds Piers was the son of Major Howard Alfred Piers, the commanding officer of Moncton’s 5th (Reserve) Armored Corps. Major Piers and his wife Helen received word at their Cameron Street home stating only that their son had been killed in action September 12, 1943. With no other details available they could only guess what happened or even where Lynds was, though he was correctly presumed to be in Italy. It was learned later that he was killed by a land mine. The last letter he had sent had come from Sicily but the date of his death, September 12,1943 suggested he would have crossed the Strait of Messina and was somewhere on the boot of mainland Italy. 

Piers, who died a month after his 23rd birthday, went overseas right after war broke out in 1939 as a member of Moncton’s 8th Battery Royal Canadian Artillery. Before the war, he attended Moncton High School and worked for the T. Eaton Company, Maritimes Limited. Besides his parents, he was survived by a younger brother, James, of the Royal Canadian Volunteer Reserve on the HMCS Vegreville, who came through the war unharmed. James was in port at Halifax when he learned of his brother’s death. James shipped out shortly afterward and was aboard his minesweeper in English Channel on D-Day. Lynds also had two sisters, Frances and Constance, at home. He is buried in Italy in the Bari War Cemetery.